All This Useless Beauty is the seventeenth studio album by the English singer-songwriter Elvis Costello, released in 1996 by Warner Bros. Records. It is his tenth and final album with his long-standing backing band the Attractions, and the last album he delivered under his contract to the Warner Bros. label, his contract expiring with a further compilation album, Extreme Honey. It peaked at number 28 on the UK album chart, and at number 53 on the Billboard 200.
In its original conception, the album was to be a two-disc set of songs written for other artists, entitled A Case for Song, with backing by a diverse array of musicians, influenced by his participation in the 1995 Meltdown Festival.[12] Aspects of this concept survived to the final album, as four songs previously released by others made it to the final track listing: "The Other End of the Telescope," co-written with Aimee Mann and originally recorded by 'Til Tuesday; "You Bowed Down," recorded by Roger McGuinn; "All This Useless Beauty" and "I Want to Vanish," recorded by June Tabor.[13] The title is a sarcastic reference to what Costello thought would be the fate of the album.[14]
Unusually, six tracks were released as singles in either the United Kingdom or the United States; "It's Time", "Little Atoms", "The Other End of the Telescope", "Distorted Angel", "All This Useless Beauty" and "You Bowed Down". Four of these—"Little Atoms", "The Other End of the Telescope", "Distorted Angel", and "All This Useless Beauty"—were released the same month as part of a limited-time promotion campaign, with each single featuring covers of songs from the album by other artists, such as Lush, Sleeper, and Tricky.[16] Costello, who described the release as a "pop art project" where each single got deleted one week after its initial launch, explained:
It's like leaving trails everywhere. What it is it's fun. The danger of making a record, particularly one that reconsiders older material, is that it's too easy to define. Inside the easy definition, there's all this life, melodies, ideas, loads of things. There's a danger of putting music like this into a glass case, and I refuse to do that.[16]
"It's Time" charted at number 58 in the UK, while all of the four limited promotional releases but "Distorted Angel" reached the 90s on the UK charts. "You Bowed Down" reached number eight on the Billboard Adult Alternative Songs chart.
The album was released initially on compact disc, cassette & LP in 1996. As part of the Rhino Records reissue campaign for Costello's back catalogue from Demon/Columbia and Warners, it was re-released in 2001 with 17 additional tracks on a bonus disc. Additional tracks continued the album's initial concept, tracks intended for recording by or in collaboration with other artists.[17] "The Days Take Care of Themselves" and "The Comedians" had been written for Roy Orbison, his recording of the latter appearing on Mystery Girl, while "The Only Flame in Town" had been intended for Aaron Neville. "The World's Great Optimist," another collaboration with Aimee Mann, appeared on her Bachelor No. 2 album (as "The Fall of the World's Own Optimist"), and Johnny Cash recorded "Hidden Shame" on Boom Chicka Boom.[17] This reissue is out of print, the album reissued again by Universal Music Group after its acquisition of Costello's complete catalogue in 2006.
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